Marx and the Foundations of the Critical Theory of Morality and Ethics

7/31/2019 Marx and the Foundations of the Critical Theory of Morality and Ethics

1/22

Marx and the Foundations of the Critical Theory of

Morality and EthicsB. Ricardo Brown

Understanding the Question of Ethics in Marx

1. How are we to understand the ethical content of Marx's work? Is there a socialist

ethic or an ethic of socialism? Of course, these are not new questions within the

marxist tradition. One hundred years ago, debates over "ethical socialism" coincided

with those over accumulation, imperialism, organization and party. Although the

question of ethics has been raised most recently by neo-liberal and neo-authoritarian

critics, the turn to the question of ethics has not occurred for intellectual reasons. It is

occasioned by the passing of state capitalism in the USSR and by the simultaneouscritique of the adaptation by the Left of the discursive categories of bourgeois science

in the forms of scientific socialism and the science of historical materialism. However,

to raise the question of ethics is one thing, but to uncover its location within critical

theory is quite another.

2. Broadly speaking, responses to the question of ethics have displayed two

theoretical tendencies. In the first tendency, there is a moralization of Marx through

the construction of the "young Marx." This tendency identifies the entirety of Marx's

critique of morality with his readings of Hegel and Feuerbach, the assumption being

that Marx's critique of morality is restricted to these early works, leaving theimpression that his materialism is at best discontinuous from his critique of morality,

and, at worst, simply derived from a previous, enlightenment moral theory.

3. The second tendency is that of the so-called orthodox marxists who hold that

ethics are merely the reflection or representation of economic determinations, simply

a transparent feature of the base/superstructure model. This view also displays strong

evolutionary arguments (see Kautsky and cf. Habermas). Like the first tendency, the

effort here is to restrict ethics to Marx's early works. However, the goal is not to

moralize the works but to transform the later works into promethean discourses of

modern science, what Max Horkheimer called "Traditional Theory." The reduction ofhistorical materialism to a science of social development attempts to remove ethics

from consideration because of its "unscientific" nature. The very fact that ethics exist

asunscientific simply means that at least one aspect of critical theory can not be

reduced to the disciplining of science -- and it also means that there are possibly many

more. Of course, these tendencies are not mutually exclusive, and evidence of both

can be found in the writings of marxists as different as Althusser and Habermas, but to


2/22

answer the question of ethics in Marx is to also critique the moralization of Marx, as

well as the adoption by marxists of the techniques and discourses of modern science.

For Marx, ethics and morality do existscientifically, i.e., they exist

both historically and materially. Marx's view of ethics is, in other words, an active

expression of a materialism that holds the promise of emancipation.

4. This essay, by starting with Marx's later works, and particularly with

the Grundrisse, departs from the two aforementioned tendencies by deriving Marx's

ethics from his materialism, demonstrating that if we open the question of ethics in the

later works, the ethos that emerges provides little comfort to those who would turn

Marx into either a moralist, or a scientist of the social. Marx's project of "ruthless

critique of all things" certainly included the critique of bourgeois ethics and morality.

It is precisely because ethics are most often sought after or confined to Marx's "early

works" that the question of ethics allows us to touch on the continuous issues of the

"young Marx" and the idea of an epistemological break, Marx's critique of morality,

the place of this critique within the entirety of his development of materialism, and the

relation of ethics to materialism. By beginning with the later works, I make an implicit

argument for a large measure of continuity in Marx's project. It is true that works like

theHoly Family are more overt critiques of morality, and we will discuss this work in

more detail later. It is also true, I will argue, that these works should be seen as

moments in Marx's overcoming and exposing of bourgeois morality and that the

results of this critique are to be found within a later work like theGrundrisse. It is, to

be sure, a critique different in style and depth than that found in the early works. Marx

himself is often critical of these early efforts, but they are nonetheless continuous with

his development of materialism. We can find a discourse on morality and ethics in

the Grundrisse, but it is a discourse that pointedly avoids all sentimentality,

development, or predetermined categories such as good and bad. It is a discourse in

which ethics are derived from the practice of struggle. The struggles around morality

are not a struggles over values, but conflicts in which each class is expressed in their

means of reproducing the very struggle that creates them -- and finds emancipatory

expression in their practices of resistance, pleasure, and authority, i.e., in their

sensuous social activity.

5. Marx moved beyond the question of human nature or essence, Althusser notes,

and towards a critical analysis of the reproduction of the everyday world of capital. Ifwe do not identify this critique with bourgeois political economy, then we are obliged

to view the concept of an epistemological break -- despite its value in showing Marx's

overcoming of Hegelianism -- as concealing the continuity and development of

Marx's materialism. By taking production as his stating point, Marx attempts to

address a fundamental problem of all previous materialist philosophy, identified in the

First Thesis on Feuerbach as the problem of sensuous activity, pleasure and freedom.


3/22

While Marx's rejection of Hegelian idealism was complete, his rejection of Feuerbach

is not a rejection of materialism. "The separation from the Hegelian School was here

also the result of a return to the materialist standpoint" (Engels 1941:43) and the

practical tasks of materialism, which always consist of"denouncing all myth, all

mystifications, all superstitions" (Deleuze 1994:270), and the purpose of which is, as

Marx said, to change the world.

The "Young Marx"

6. The ethical question is not a question of the "young Marx" vs. Marx. Althusser

was correct to see the construction of the "young Marx" as both a theoretical problem

as well as a practical tactic of social democrats opposed to the Bolshevik party

ideologies within the Cold War Left. The ethical question is fundamentally, "Which

Marx? The Hegelian or the materialist?"

7. Althusser rightly noted that Marx systematically rejected both Hegel's idealism

and Feuerbach's materialism, purging his work of both humanism and essentialism.

This means that he rid himself of any ethics based upon an abstract notion of human

nature or rights. Althusser maintained, however, that what remained after this

revolution of subjectivity was a science of historical materialism. Aronowitz

decisively critiques this move on the grounds that Althusser mistakes materialism,

which is always a revolutionary ideological practice, for bourgeois science

(Aronowitz 1988). There is indeed, one might say, a Hegelian Marx, else Marx and

Althusser would not have spent so much time exorcising him. Nor would Lenin have

suggested that one read Hegel'sLogic to understand Capital. Of course,

the Grundrisse was unknown to Lenin, but to follow up on a suggestion of Nicolaus,

with the Grundrisse it is no longer necessary to see Marx through Hegel, but instead

as a materialist who gave us an alternative understanding of the dialectics of history

and materialism.

8. At the same time, some writers like McCarthy in his otherwise admirableMarx

and the Ancients, attempt to transform Marx's work into the discourse of Greek

philosophy, as though Marx simply returned to the Greeks. These works exaggerate

the continuity and at the same time they forget that what Marx said about Greek art is

equally true of Greek philosophy: "One can not become a child again withoutbecoming childish" (1973:103). In his dissertation, Marx critiqued Epicurean

philosophy as an ascetic and contemplative philosophy that justified a withdrawal

from the everyday world into the garden of philosophy.1To find the ethical content of

the Grundrisse, we can look to the example of Epicurus, who derived his ethics,

including an egalitarianism and freedom quite uncharacteristic of most Greek

philosophers, from his physics. In much the same way, we must derive Marx's ethics
http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note1http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note1http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note1http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note1


4/22

from his materialism. This is in fact how Marx undertook his own work on Epicurus:

". . . instead of presenting moments out of the preceding Greek philosophies as

conditions for the life of the Epicurean philosophy, I reason back from the later to

draw conclusions about the former and thus let it itself formulate its own particular

position" (1975b:493).

9. As we mentioned earlier, because the Grundrisse begins with the production of

difference, it also has indeterminacy at its center. Determinism, Marx noted in the

dissertation, is a crucial question of materialism. In his study of Democritius and

Epicurus, Marx concluded that despite what he understood as Epicurean materialism's

contemplative stance, it was a major advance over the Democritean system, which

viewed the fall of the atom as determined, and removed chance from the workings of

nature. While Democritius held that the atom fell in a straight line, and hence the

experience of the world was essentially determined, Marx notes that Epicurus

advanced the thesis that instead of falling in a straight line, atoms are subject to

spontaneous swerves because of their effects upon one another. In this spontaneous

swerve of the atom, Epicurus located his argument for the immanence of freedom in

nature, and a world not determined for people, but made by them (Marx 1975). It is

instructive to note that De Santillana (1961) sees the same element of freedom in

Epicurean materialism that Marx discerns, and also goes further and interprets

Epicurus and his more famous follower Lucretius within the political context of their

time (a task that Marx did not do in his dissertation). Rejecting the repressive weight

of Hamlet's "dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose

bourne no traveller returns, puzzles the will," De Santillana seconds the traditional

view of Epicurus as the first to bring humans to the status of god, or god to the status

of human invention, and thereby free us of this myth. ". . . [T]he man who destroyed

the whole foundation of religious faith and overturned the altars and the temples of the

gods, not by manly force, as Xerxes did, but by the force of argument" (Cicero

1972:116). And in doing so, the determinism and unity of divinity gave way to a

materialism that located spontaneity and difference in nature. For materialism, chance

is

an initial element of indeterminacy, of spontaneity, at the core of the atom, so that it

should work out as freedom at every point, in nature and specifically in life. . . . The

message, in any case is clear: freedom does not come . . . from above, and to the electas Plato would have it in hisLaws; it comes from the very core of things, within life

itself. Hence it is every man's [sic] inalienable inheritance. (De Santillana 1961:291-

292)

10. But we can not really say that Marx returned to Epicurus. Marx had long

before, in his dissertation, condemned even Epicurean materialism as a contemplative

and ascetic philosophy (which is also how Nietzsche would later describe


5/22

it).2However, it did have some very positive elements that Marx highlighted. It

derived its ethics from its materialism, and more importantly, Epicurean materialism

lacked essentialism. It placed all humanness into the sensuous experience of an

indeterminate nature.3Marx is particularly impressed with Epicurus locating freedom

in nature itself, in the spontaneous swerve of the falling atom, and not in a

transcendental category or in an essentialized Human Nature. Humans, from theirsensations to their thoughts, never stand apart from nature. Epicurean materialism

immersed all humans in the sensuous experience of an indeterminate nature. Marx in

the Grundrisse does the same with the social relations that make us human.

11. The Grundrisse and Capitalbegin at a very different moments.4Capital, for

reasons of political practice, begins with the commodity and with the fetishism of

commodities. I.I. Rubin convincingly places the fetishism of commodities at the

center ofCapital. "The theory of fetishism is,per se, the basis of Marx's entire

economic system . . . revealing the illusion in human consciousness which originated

in the commodity economy and which assigned to things characteristics which have

their source in the social relations among people in the process of production" (Rubin

1993:5). But it is notMarx's economic system-- for he proposed no such theory -- but

"the many capitals of capital" that spread with the commodity form to every corner of

the social world.Capitalbegins with difference, with the multitude of commodities

that appearas one vast accumulation, as the unity that reveals the imperialism

inherent in commodity production (Luxemburg 1964). In the relentless drive by

capital to overcome all limits, production must be subsumed under the commodity

form. Rubin's analysis shows how Capitalis an immanent critique, starting

necessarily from the capitalists' own understanding of the world as a world of

commodities. As described by Marx, it is the fetishism of commodities that gives the

appearance of an infinite market of difference, but this difference is a mystery whose

solution reveals the unity of capital accumulation made real by its essential

imperialism. In the Grundrisse, Marx replaces the fetishistic difference of

commodities with the real difference of production.

12. The Grundrisse is first distinguished by the fact that it is not written from the

perspective of the capitalist. Instead, it is written from within capital, by an active

opponent of capitalist relations. The Grundrisse does not begin with commodities but

with "material production. Individuals producing in society -- hence sociallydetermined individual production by an animal which can individuate itself only in the

midst of society" (1973:83-84). But in starting with production, Marx avoids the error

of bourgeois political economy, which also startswith an abstract discussion of

production. Instead, he opposes the a priori totality of "production in general."

Horkheimer further reminds us that for "traditional" or "scientific" theory, "production

is the production of unity, and production is itself a product." Classical political
http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note2http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note2http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note2http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note3http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note3http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note3http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note4http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note4http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note4http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note4http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note3http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#note2


6/22

economy is marked by a "determinative, ordering, unifying function" that serves as

the "sole foundation for all else, and towards it all human effort is directed." This

unifying function expresses itself as the "consciousness of the bourgeois savant in the

liberal era" (Horkheimer 1972:198), and is opposed to critical theory, which holds that

production as the production of difference. Political economy, in both its marxist and

its bourgeois forms, aims to describe production "as encased in eternal natural lawsindependent of history, at which opportunity bourgeois relations are then smuggled in

as the inviolable natural laws on which society in the abstract is founded" (Marx

1973:97). Marx's work is a critiqueof political economy. Horkheimer is simply

paraphrasing Marx's statement that "the whole profundity of those modern economists

who demonstrate the eternity and harmoniousness of existing social relations" lies in

forgetting "that each determination is itself segmented many times over and splits into

different determinations" (1973:85). The "essential difference" within any

determination should never be forgotten. Production as an abstract unity, "production

in general" did not concern Marx. And if "there is no production in general, then there

is no general production, or it is always a particular branch of production, or it is a

totality [comprised of many branches of production]. Production is also not only a

particular production, rather, it is always a certain social body, a social subject, which

is active . . ." (1973:85).

13. Production -- material production -- is the production of difference. But the

production of difference is at the same time the consumption of this difference. In

fact, it is this dialectic of production and consumption that Marx uses to demonstrate

both his debt to and his overcoming of Hegel's dialectical method. For Marx states

that "there is nothing simpler for a Hegelian than to posit production and consumption

as identical" (1973:93), but it is not Marx's goal to prove this identity, but to critique

it, to expose the non-identity of capital and labor, and thereby show that production is

not merely consumption, but also the consumption of difference: "productive

consumption" Marx calls it. In maintaining that production is the production of

difference, Marx does not close off dialectical development, but opens it up to spiral

ever further, acknowledging a fundamental indeterminacy to social relations. In a

world of socially individuated humans producing in society, production is never the

abstraction of "production in general," but is always expressed in material difference,

i.e., in class. And ethics are inherent in the determinations of class, for Marx does not

allow us any generalizations, even that ofsociety. "This so-called contemplation fromthe standpoint of society means nothing more than the overlooking of the differences

which express the social relation (relation of bourgeois society). Society does not

consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of the interrelations within which these

individuals stand" (1973:264-265).


7/22

14. The Grundrisse is best understood as the foundation of a materialist critique. If

we want to understand ethics in the Grundrisse, then we must see it as the foundation

of a materialism that derives its ethics from the experience of social bodies immersed

in the historical activity of the production of difference. For theGrundrisse has

difference at its center, in other words, it has the historical indeterminacy of class

struggle at its center. And Marx, to emphasize the point again, is not writing about thisstruggle from the perspective of the capitalist. Thus, it is difference that allows us to

derive the ethical content from a work that rarely mentions the word "ethics." For the

entirety of this essay, I take seriously the possibility that the Grundrisse is truly the

foundation of an exposition of materialism. My argument will proceed bearing in

mind that any discussion of ethics is obliged to avoid the trap of searching for

moralizing statements in Marx's texts, and instead locate the ethical content in the

critique itself, i.e., within materialism. Morality, Marx said, is a particular mode of

production (1978:85).

The Critique of Bourgeois Morality: life as sensuous activity

15. In some ways, The Holy Family is the first work of Cultural Studies, or at least

of Critical Theory. All of the concerns are there, popular culture and the media, the

"mass," authority, morality, punishment and ethics, the method of immanent critique

that is to form the basis of the critique of political economy, and the technique based

upon immanent critique and close reading. The texts (Sue's novel, the newspaper, the

review of the novel) are deconstructed and recombined, with the addition of Marx's

critique, into a new text. One moves from the review of a popular novel to the critique

of Hegelianism itself, as well as a Nietzschian critique of morality. Certainly, it is adefiant rejection of bourgeois morality, ethics, and sexuality. Perhaps this is what is so

important about The Holy Family, that it is where Marx takes up the problems of

ethics and ethical life, following Rudolf through Parisian society in much the way one

follows "ethical self-consciousness" in thePhenomenologythrough its development

(another turning of Hegel on his head).5It is also a critique that is never again given

an extended, or explicit, treatment -- although one does hear it in theManifesto in

Marx's denouncement of marriage as a respectable form of prostitution and slavery. It

is a critique that Marx himself critiques for its humanism, but the critique itself, as a

ruthless critique of ideology, is never renounced. Indeed, The Holy Family was

written at the same time as theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts, and so it isnot the result of a youthful Marx's naivet or an early Hegelianism, as it was at this

time that Marx overcomes Hegel. A certain indeterminacy lies at the heart of Marx's

critique of morality, but Marx realized that to critique morality was not enough. Marx

therefore carries over his critique of the social relations of morality to his critique of

political economy and social relations in general. The multiple determinations and

overdeterminations of historical relations express the indeterminacy of nature and our


8/22

attempts to control and rationalize it, first through others (slavery), and then directly

(commodification, management, and supervision) and which has its expression in new

forms of discipline and control (Marx 1973; Marx I, 1976; Deleuze 1994).

16. Marx establishes his position, which is an essential aspect of materialist

philosophy, that there is no good or bad. The opposition of good and bad is not adialectic, he says, but only a "mystery" of bourgeois morality. This view goes to the

heart of his critique of Proudhon as having merely modified Hegel's Dialectic, making

"every economic category" have two sides

. . . one good, the other bad. He looks upon these categories as the petty bourgeois

looks upon the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did a lot of good;

he also did a lot of harm. The good side and the bad side, the advantages and the

drawbacks, taken together form for M. Proudhon the contradiction in every economic

category. The problem to be solved: to keep the good side, while eliminating the bad.

[Marx then mocks Proudhon.]

Slavery is an economic category like any other. Thus it also has two sides. Let us

leave alone the bad side and talk about the good side of slavery[!]. . . . (1978:104-105)

Marx accuses Proudhon of having read Hegel's ethical development of the spirit as

expressing essential ethical qualities of good and bad. For Marx, ethics exist in the

material situation itself, in this example, in the institution of slavery. The good of

slavery is that without it, you would have no cotton, and no modern industry, and no

world trade. "The value of slavery is not in any good inherent in the abstract concept

of its thesis -- we have left aside its 'bad' side -- and it seems that the 'good' side isgood only relative to whether you think that it is 'good' to have a system built upon

slavery at all" (Marx 1978:105).

17. To remain within materialism, and not be reduced to the negative abstraction of

good and bad, ethics must be derived from sensuous experience. Bourgeois morality

seeks to limit sensuous experience at every opportunity because such limits are seen,

as Freud pointed out, as the foundation for social life. This limit is a limit not of

nature -- for which the very indeterminacy of its material existence endows it an

almost infinite productive potential (Epicurus 1964:11) -- but always a limit of capital.

Freud later found, but could never admit, that the limits of the human psyche that hediscovered were the products of the social relations of capital and specific to the

bourgeois and petite bourgeois classes, and that even the Oedipal relation, supposedly

so universal, was experienced first as a deployment within the bourgeoisie for the

purpose of controlling itself and only later universalized to the other classes.6


9/22

18. It is sensuous experience that Marx takes up in theHoly Family, his first

collaboration with Engels. Written at the same time as the "Economic and

Philosophical Manuscripts," theHoly Family demolishes the "mysteries" of the

Young Hegelians. By interweaving a critique of Szeliga's review with a close reading

of the text, Marx's critique operates on two levels: 1) as a general critique of the

Idealism of the Young Hegelians, and of Hegel himself, and 2) as a critique ofmorality and discipline that uses sensuousness not a transcendental ideal that may be

repressed, but as the basis for human emancipation.

19. Like Freud, Marx avoids the error of the science of his day and rejects

degeneracy as an explanation for poverty, deviance, and other social problems and

conflicts. Degeneracy is only a mystification that conceals the real social conditions

that are expressed through the bodies of humans producing socially. Marx finds the

limit to human freedom not in the "mystery of degeneracy," but in the experience of

capital relations in the everyday world. It is this limit to freedom, to nature itself, that

Marx exposes in theHoly Family, where he deconstructs a review by the critical

criticism of Szeliga through his review of Eugene Sue'snovel Mysteres de Paris.

Because the mystery of degeneracy is to be found in the world, Marx follows Szeliga

following Sue's protagonist, Rudolph, through his rounds of the city, where he seeks

to raise up the weak and punish the wicked. Only we find that things are not so clear

cut in Marx's close reading.

20. Marx speaks first of Szeliga: "his art is not that of disclosing what is hidden,

but in hiding what is disclosed . . . [and] presenting world conditions as mysteries. He

proclaims as mysteries degeneracy [criminals, prostitutes, the poor, etc.] within

civilization and rightlessness and inequality in the state." Marx sees no mystery in

these conditions, after all "the credo of most states starts . . . by making the high and

the low, the rich and the poorunequalbefore the law" (1943:70). Marx characterizes

Szeliga's presentation as the "mystery ofspeculative, ofHegelian construction."

Szeliga proclaims degeneracy in civilization and rightlessness in the state to be

mysteries, which Marx says dissolves them into the "category mystery" which takes

on an abstract existence apart "from present world conditions":

Only now, after dissolving real relations, e.g., law and civilization, in the category of

mystery and making "Mystery" into Substance, does [Szeliga] rise to the true

speculative,Hegelian, height and transform "Mystery" into a self-existing Subject

incarnating itself in real situations and persons so that the manifestations of its life are

countesses, marquises, grisettes, porters, notaries, charlatans, love intrigues, balls,

wooden doors, etc. Having produced the category "Mystery" out of the real world, he

produces the real world out of this category (75-76).


10/22

21. Rudolph, the protagonist, roams the streets of Sue's Paris, encountering

representatives of the various social classes. But in Szeliga's review, even Sue's

bourgeois morality, which at least recognizes the existence of other classes and

moralities, is reduced to the category of "mystery." Of course, Feuerbach also used the

metaphor of mystery, "but whereas Feuerbach disclosed real mysteries, [Szeliga]

makes mysteries out of realtrivialities. His art is not that of disclosing what is hidden,but of hiding what is disclosed" (Marx 1980:70). Rudolph's journey through the

mysterious social hierarchy of Paris consists precisely in this hiding of what is

disclosed, for no sooner is a "mystery" exposed than its expressive, affirmative aspect

is subsumed under the sign of bourgeois morality and an ethic of bad conscience and

revenge. In fact Marx effectively shows the role of revenge and punishment in

Rudolph's administration of justice, thereby putting punishment at the center of

Rudolph/Sue/Szeliga's bourgeois morality.

22. Rudolph's is a reactive stroll. The stroll has become familiar in some genres of

critical theory. Closely associated with urbanism, the stroll, which dates as a

theoretical subject to Simmel, Baudelaire, and Benjamin, is often conceived of as an

emancipatory experience, an example being Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of

Buchner's "Lenz" (Deleuze and Guatarri 1983:4-5). Lenz on his stroll is removed

from the conditions that require that he "constantly situate himself socially, in

relationship to the god of established religion, in relationship to his father, to his

mother," and to the reproduction of capitalist relations. Lenz on his stroll experiences

"not nature as nature, but [nature] as a process of production" (Deleuze and Guattari

1983:2). His stroll "emancipates him from the jail-yard of individual relations"

(Emerson 1887). Conversely, Rudolph's stroll can be read as the steady accumulation

of the very limits that Lenz seeks to momentarily escape. Rudolph seeks to enforce

limits, especially to limit production to proscribed paths (and hence conceal

production's essential difference by giving it a false identity). Possessing the ability to

reform even the most wretched person in accordance with his "impartial judgment"

(Szeliga), Rudolph sets about reforming the lives of all the nere-do-wells he meets. In

order to accomplish this task, he either punishes them in accord with the "ruthless . . .

thought ofpure criticism" (Szeliga), i.e., punishment and torture; or Rudolph brings

them into the strictures of bourgeois morality, where "the ethics of political economy .

. . acquisition, work, thrift, sobriety" (Marx 1978:97), dictate that they, like the

characters he "reforms," should willingly die for their "master," having no other needthan to serve him.7Rudolph goes to a ball and finds the aristocracy in its everyday

condition. He talks to two of the "most beautiful among the beautiful" and he expects

to hear from them their joy regarding "the blessing of beloved children and the

fullness" of a life spent seeing to the "happiness of a husband." At the very least, since

he is amongst the aristocracy, he expects a certain moral supremacy that comes with

political power. Instead, they gossip about adultery and the very real and decadent,


11/22

morality of their peers. This leads to Szeliga/Sue's speculations on love and

sensuality.

23. It is here that Marx reverses the terms of the discussion and, in the manner of

Spinoza, unmasks real relations that are so easily proclaimed mysteries.8Marx puts

forward the materialist view that it is through sensuous activity -- in love and in labor-- that humans experience the world. It is within sensuous activity that we experience

the production of desire, the utilization of human impulses, and the historical

materiality of human relations. This sensuous activity has, since the end of feudalism,

been increasingly expressed in the production of the general ideological practices of

capital, commodity fetishism and the concealment of bourgeois morality through the

production of the "mystery of speculative love." This is aptly shown by Marx's

analysis of the character of the parson in Sue's novel. Marx points out that the parson's

idea of love conforms to the design of the church (1980:81) and not the actual

sensuality of sex. It is a statement limited by Christian morality. The parson uses the

metaphors of love -- which Marx deconstructs into the real social power of the church

-- to conceal the real sensuousness of love, and to deny the very real things of sex.

Szeliga goes on to ask:

What is the mystery of love? . . . Not the shady paths in the thickets, declaims the

parson, "not the natural semi-obscurity of moonlight night nor the artificial semi-

obscurity of costly curtains and draperies; no the soft and enrapturing notes of the

harps and the organs, not the attraction of what is forbidden. . . . All this [curtains,

draperies and organs] is only the mysterious. The mysterious in it is what excites,

what intoxicates, what enraptures, the power of sensuality." (1980:81 interpolation by

Marx)

To which Marx replies: "Curtains anddraperies! Soft andenrapturing notes! Even the

organ! Let the reverend parson stop thinking of the church! Who would bring an

organ to a love tryst?" The parson states that the "mysterious in [love] is what excites,

what intoxicates, what enraptures, the power of sensuality." Sensuality therefore

invokes the experience of these things. On the contrary, Marx argues that our

sensuality is excited, intoxicated, enraptured in our experience of the world. He says,

The parson advises us, after the fashion of speculative theology,

to recognize sensuality as our own nature, in order afterwards to dominate it, i.e., to

retract recognition of it. True, he wishes to dominate it only when it tries to assert

itself at the expense ofReason -- will-power and love asopposedto sensuality are only

the will-power and love ofReason. The unspeculative Christian also

recognizessensuality as long as it does not assert itself at the expense of true reason,

i.e., of faith, of true love, i.e., of love of God, of true will-power, i.e., of will in Christ.

(1980:81)


12/22

The parson does acknowledge that sensuality "has such a tremendous power over us"

because we will not recognize it as a part of our nature. Szeliga maintains that this is a

mystery of love, he does not explain it. So we must rhetorically ask, why this refusal?.

"It is true that we [the parson or the church?] do not like to admit the power of

sensuality. . . ." This is understandable, given that such an admission can only come as

a confession and a submission to Reason. According to Szeliga

If then love ceases to be the essential element of marriage and of morality in general,

sensuality becomes the mystery of love, of morality, of educated society -- sensuality

both in its narrowmeaning, in which it is a trembling in the nerves and a burning

stream in the veins, and in the broader meaning, in which it is elevated to

asemblance of spiritual power, to lust for power, ambition, craving for glory. . . .

(Szeliga in Marx and Engels1980:81)

Marx then gives his final blow contra Szeliga, Sue and Hegel:

The parson hits the nail on the head. To overcomesensuality he must first of all

overcome thenerve currents and the quickcirculation of the blood.. . . . As soon as

there is no more nerve current and the blood in the veins is no longer hot, thesinful

body, this seat of sensual lust, becomes a corpse and the souls can converse

unhindered about "general reason," "true love," and "pure mortals." The parson

debases sensuality to such an extent that he abolishes the very elements of sensual

love which inspire it -- the rapid circulation of blood, which proves that man does not

love by insensitive phlegm; the nerve currents which connect the organ that is the

main seat of sensuality with the brain. He reduces true sensual love to the mechanical

secretio seminis and lisps with notorious German theologian: "Not for the sake of

sensual love, not for the lust of the flesh, but because the Lord said: Increase and

Multiply" (1980:82)

24. Love and labor are for Marx the real sensuous experiences of everyday life.

The experience of Homo sapiens who are made human throughtheir social

production. Love is not a spiritual bond, nor does it represent the internal development

of an absolute love in the ideas of humans. It is nature itself in humans and it must be

dominated as nature is dominated. Even before labor there is sensuous activity, and

this remains even after it becomes human sensuous activity through social labor. It is

that part of us that is nature, not human nature, but nature-as-nature, which is

historically prior to human social relations, although the two are historically linked.

The passion of love is incapable of having an interest in internaldevelopment because

it can not be constructed apriori, because its development is a real one which takes

place in the world of the senses and between real individuals . . . what Critical

Criticism combats here is not merely love, but everything which is immediate, every


13/22

sensuous experience, any and every real experience, the "whence" and the "whither"

of which one neverknows beforehand. (Marx 1980:30)

Hence Critical Criticism combats the everyday world of individuals producing in

society, the "whence and whether" we can not know precisely because it

is materialproduction, and therefore, indeterminate. It is the production of difference.The particular production that concerns us is capitalist production, which is a

historically situated domination of social production through theseemingly unlimited

expansion of wage-labor and the concurrent commodification of the everyday (Marx

1980: 322-324). It is the particular character of domination that is found under capital

that necessitates that we turn our attention towards the most terrible of expression of

"moral" order, slavery.

Morality and Slavery

25. The domination of sensuality, or the domination of sensuous experience, is also

the domination of human labor -- since it is labor that is so much a part of us and

through which we create ourselves (Lefebvre 1991:74-75). Under capital, the

domination of sensuous experience has its particular form in the work of supervision

and management-- authority-- that pervades both family and work.9However, as

authority "necessarily arises where the direct production process takes the form of a

socially combined process . . . it takes on two different forms" (Marx 1976 [III]:507).

In the one, the increased cooperation inherent in the historical division of labor,

authority can appear as a "governingwill . . . like the conductor of an orchestra"

(Marx 1976 [III]:507; emphasis added) who leads, but is not the composer. The

division of labor necessitates authority, but the expression of authority is specific to

any process of social production. This is the second form of authority and it is the

specificity of capital production that concerned Marx. While chattel slavery is the

"high point" of the concentration of supervision, capital has its own concentrations of

authority. The work of supervision and management is as "indispensable in the

capitalist mode of production" as it is under slavery. Moreover, there is in both the

tendency for supervision and management to become separate from ownership. In the

case of Roman slavery, this tendency resulted in the villicus, the manager of a slave

estate. In the case of American slavery, it is found in the position of the overseer, and

in the separation of the house from the field slaves. Under capital, it is the slavery ofthe wage. But under capital, there is a multiplicity of supervisory positions so that

even the individual capitalist can appear to another as a worker, for example,

theindustrial capitalist might appear as such to thefinancial capitalist. Marx actually

applies Aristotle's description of the slave holder to the capitalist. The interpolated

comments are Marx's:


14/22

"For the master" -- the capitalist -- "proves himself such not by obtaining slaves'

ownership of capital, which gives him the power to buy labor" -- "but by employing

slaves" -- using laborers, nowadays wage-laborers, in the production process. "There

is nothing great or sublime about this science but whatever the slave is to perform, the

master must be able to order. Whenever the masters are not compelled to plague

themselves with supervision, the overseer assumes this honor, while the masterspursue public affairs or philosophy." (Marx 1976 [III]:509, quoting Aristotle,De

Republica, Book I, 7)

Marx explains the importance of this science:

What Aristotle is saying, in very blunt terms, is that domination, in the economic as

well as the political, imposes on those in power the functions of dominating, so that in

the economic domain, they must know how to consume labour-power. And he adds

that this supervisory work is not a matter of very great moment, which is why the

master leaves the "honour" of this drudgery to an overseer as soon as he is wealthyenough (1976 [III]:509).

In the social domain, the critique of capital relations is also the critique of slave

relations, there is, after all a reason why it is called wage-slavery. In a sense, Marx

reveals to us the paradox of Hegel's statement that "A slave can have no duties; only a

free man has them" (Hegel 1967:261). The "free man" is free to submit to duty. In

other words, the free man has his freedom determined by his duty, his unfreedom. The

slave, having no freedom, also has no duty. And having no duty, can not be fully

human. But this does not go far enough. The specific aspect of capital's social

domination in the capitalist mode of production is that the slave and the "free man"

become one and the same. It is not a question of the contradictions between

abstractions, but, of the conflicts around the ownership of production and the

apparatus of supervision and administration (e.g., the state, the boss, the teacher, the

doctor, etc.). The capacity to command the labor of others permeates the labor process

in general, so that even the capitalist appears as "a functionary of capital, as a simple

bearer of the labor process in general; as a worker, and a wage-worker at that" (Marx

1976 [III]::505). Marx draws this comparison of the slave and the "free worker":

The slave is the property of a particularmaster; the worker must indeed sell himself to

capital, but not to a particular capitalist; and so within certain limitations he may

choose to sell himself to whomever he wishes, and he may also change his master.

The effect of all these differences is to make the free worker's work more intensive,

more continuous, more flexible and skilled than that of the slave quite apart from the

fact that they fit him for quite a different role. The slave receives the means of

subsistence he requires in the form ofnaturalia which are fixed both in kind and

quantity -- i.e., he receives use values. The free worker receives them in the shape of


15/22

money, exchange values. . . . [The free worker] learns to control himself [his

conversion of "money into whatever use-values he desires"] in contrast to the slave,

who needs a master. (Marx 1976 [I]:I, 1032-1033)

26. At no point does Marx condemn slavery on the basis of abstract ethical

concepts of good and bad. Instead, the critique of slavery serves to underscore theneed to understand the ethical content of Marx's work in light of the materialist

practice of deriving ethics from the conditions of life. The creation of capital's "free

man" as the bearer of capital's authority -- who is in all senses the child of the

Enlightenment -- has an important place in Marx's critique of morality, especially that

of bourgeois discipline and punishment. The critique of bourgeois punishment is

continuous with Marx's discussion of the work of supervision and management. This

is, of course, ineluctably tied to the domination of Reason over sensual experience,

which in turn intersects with human attempts to dominate nature, and which has been

shown by the impressive research of the Frankfurt School to be a necessary aspect of

the domination of humans by other humans. Of course, this form of domination is

itself the domination of the everyday life of the person It is in this sense that the

domination of the finite time granted by life becomes the means by which we can

understand capital as the crystallization of dead labor (Gulli 1996; Krysl 1997).

27. The versatility of the worker is the result of h(er/is) freedom and h(er/is)

freedom is the result of the subsumption of h(er/is) work to the relations of capital.

Versatility is an immediate result of the worker subsumed under capital. Capital

colonizes differences so that instead of producing freedom, they produce the desire for

exchange values. The alienation of the person's labor (and their labor from that of

others), becomes a desired object (commodity) that stands outside, and above, the

labor that produced it. Difference, the origin of freedom, instead is produced so as to

deny freedom. The versatility of the worker under the societies of discipline, already

the denial of the freedom of the free worker, gives way to the continuous difference,

the constant "retraining" of the present societies of control (Deleuze 1990).

Remarks

28. In the preface to his dissertation, Marx quotes Aeschylus' Prometheus defiantly

responding to the god's messenger: "Be sure of this, I would rather not change mystate of evil fortune for your servitude, / Better to be the servant of this rock, / Than to

be the faithful boy to Father Zeus." Of course, it is easy to see this rock as a metaphor

for materialism itself, which Marx never abandoned. The contradiction between

freedom and the duty of the "free man" might also be seen in this passage. Someday,

we must ask ourselves why so many editions of the "early works" begin with letters

from Marx to his father. Or why weare to find Hegel looming over Marx, providing


16/22

the only avenue for understanding Marx. "One must read Hegel to understand Marx."

If it is not a father relationship that we often try to present in our genealogies of

Marxism, then it is certainly a chronology of master and servants. Marx would have

had none of this. He sides not with Hegel, but with Epicurus, for whom

chance/spontaneity, and therefore freedom, was immanent in all of nature.

Determinism, then, is a crucial question of materialism. Again, Marx'sepistemological break with Hegel is a meaningless question if there was never a clear

unity.

29. There is no single ethics that covers all time and places, Engels notes (1941).

Engels gives a later statement (which can used if his scientism is critiqued; see

Aronowitz, 1988):

We therefore reject every effort to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an

external, ultimate and forever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral

world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differencebetween nations. We maintain on the contrary that all moral theories have been

hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society

obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonism, morality

has always been class morality . . . we have not yet passed beyond class morality. A

really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any

recollection of them becomes possible only at that stage of society which has not only

overcome class antagonism, but has forgotten them in practical life. (1978 :726-727)

30. Ethics are specific to the social bodies engaged in struggles around the

production of sensuous activity, what we might now call "everyday life." It is not that

Marx was a relativist anymore than Nietzsche was one. He was not. But he did

recognize difference in social production, and therefore ultimately rejected any

universal of human nature, or transcendental category (except those segmented by

multiple determinations, e.g., labor). Thus, Marx can assail slavery not on moral

grounds, in terms of good or bad, right and wrong, etc., but on the grounds of

pleasure, desire, and freedom, which exist materially.

31. Negri says that "to go back must be a passage into politics" (1991:103), and I

think that this is the way to understand and prepare to answer the question of ethics in

the Grundrisse. Like Capital, it is a political intervention. But by starting with

production, the Grundrisse marks the return to materialism as political action.

Therefore, any ethic in Marx must first be seen as an ethic of struggle and

resistance.10Ethics are derived from political practice, and the fundamental

production of difference means that the political is particular to each class and

segmented within each. To venture beyond this point would be to enter into a

discussion of ideology in general, which I can not dohere. But it is important to


17/22

remark that the ethical question in the Grundrisse is inescapably linked to questions of

ideology and class.However, we can also say, regarding the current ideological

struggles within the left over the ethical question, that the moralization of Marx by

Habermas, Benhabib, Taylor, MacIntyre, and others, is an attempt to work through the

problems of materialism, and historical materialism, outside of the context of the very

conditions that gave rise to the contradiction in the first place. An ethic that serves asthe justification for bourgeois morality on the basis of Marx having been an

"enlightenment thinker" ignores Marx's materialism. Marx is not an Enlightenment

thinker. In going beyond Feuerbach, Marx also went beyond the Enlightenment

totalization. As Marx said in a circular letter, when one joins the proletarian party,

"the first requirement is that they do not bring any remnants of bourgeois, or petty

bourgeois prejudices with them. . ." (1974:374). It is for this reason that I have

avoided mention of alienation, so as to avoid any confusion of my position with those

who make the ethical content of Marx rest solely upon the Feurerbachian idea of

alienation, and in so doing reduce Marx's theory of the fetishism of commodities to an

abstraction.

32. I would instead propose that an affirmative ethics can derived from Marx, one

that is emancipatory, that finds the ethical in the materiality of pleasure and that

constantly opens new avenues of desire that are not limited by the needs of capital

production, the morality of bourgeois authority and family, or even by the needs of a

party. All such political practice is reactionary, as Marx points out, because it is not

predicated on emancipation.

go to this back issue's index

home

Notes

1Epicurus' school was known as the Garden, much in the same way that Plato'sschool was known as the Academy.

2George Sarton disputes this reading, arguing that the Epicureans, by their practice of

gender equality and their public attacks on religion and superstition, were quite

conspicuous to the authorities and were therefore ultimately viciously slandered and

repressed. "Let the common people have all the superstitions they want, Plato and his
http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/2-2index.htmlhttp://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/2-2index.htmlhttp://clogic.eserver.org/default.htmlhttp://clogic.eserver.org/default.htmlhttp://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref1http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref1http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref2http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref2http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref2http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref1http://clogic.eserver.org/default.htmlhttp://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/2-2index.html


18/22

disciples would have said, they are too stupid to contemplate the truth, they prefer

lies. That may be true, but the immense difference between Plato and Epicurus

consists in this vary fact, that the former was ready to exploit popular ignorance and

credulity, while the latter does his best to eradicate them. [Epicurus was] the first to

proclaim the social danger of superstition and the primary need of fighting it. The

people must not be lied to according to the Platonic method; they must be told thetruth; if they are not sufficiently educated for that, then they must be educated; the

truth will make them free, naught else" (Sarton 1952:593).

3Cornell West (1991) has mentioned what he calls Marx's "anti-foundationalism."

However, I believe that the very use of the term transforms the question of ethics into

a question of relativism. While this is clearly West's intention, and his work is an

excellent critique of Kautsky in particular, West derives Marx's "ethical dimension"

from his "historicism." The Hegelianism of this attempt is obvious and even quite

bold, but West utterly neglects both Epicureanism and materialism in general, and

instead favors an idealist conception of moral relativism.

4Because of splits in the international movement, the Grundrisse remained virtually

unknown until about thirty to forty years ago. So it is not surprising that it was

eclipsed by Capitalas the final word from Marx. Some would say for good reason.

Once the Grundrisse began to circulate, it brought the inevitable comparison

toCapital. It is in this comparison that we can find the avenue towards the materialism

from which any socialist ethics must beand is derived. Many commentators

acknowledge the separate importance of the Grundrisse, while at the same time find

its unfinished condition unacceptable (a problem they curiously do not have with thesecond and third volumes ofCapital). Others have complained that the Grundrisse is

unreadable or an abandoned rough-draft ofCapital, "a kind of intellectual, personal,

and often indecipherable shorthand" (Hobsbawn in Negri 1991:1). Martin Nicolaus,

characterized it as a rough-draft executed mainly for the purpose of "self-clarification"

(1973:). In his commentary, Nicolaus points out that the Grundrisse can be thought of

as Capitalturned inside-out. This makes the two companion works, but works that

differ because of Marx's method of presentation. The key difference being that

"the Grundrisse and Capitalhave opposite virtues of form. The latter is the model of

the method of presentation, the former the record of the method of working"

(1973:61). But Nicolaus notes that much of the content of the Grundrisse is notcarried over intoCapital. Indeed, in the scheme of Marx's project, Capitalwas a

popular political exposition of a much larger project It is entirely plausible that

the Grundrisse and Capitalare two different works. The plan of theGrundrisse shows

it to be the foundation of a much larger project, touching on the entirety of Marx's

effort to infuse materialism with history.
http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref3http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref3http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref4http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref4http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref4http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref3


19/22

5Foucault adds that "our age, whether through logic or through epistemology,

whether through Marx or through Nietzsche, is attempting to flee Hegel" (Foucault

1971:235).

6The family in Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto is distinguished by its class

relation. Often when speaking of the family, they are referring to the bourgeoisfamily. Moreover, the bourgeois family is an institution for the exploitation of

women: "Prostitution both public and private." See also Foucault's insightful account

in hisHistory of Sexuality (1980), and Marx's "Greed for Surplus Labor"

in Capital(1976 [I]).

7"Needlessness as the principle of political economy is most brilliantly shown in its

theory of population. There are too many people. Even the existence of men is a pure

luxury; and if the worker is 'ethical,' he will be sparing in procreation. (Mill suggests

public acclaim for those who prove themselves continent in the sexual relations, and

public rebuke for those who sin against such barrenness of marriage. . . . Is not this the

ethics, the teaching of asceticism?) The production of people appears as a public

misery" (Marx 1978:97).

8"Spinoza belongs to a great tradition: the practical task of philosophy consists in

denouncing all myths, all mystifications, all superstitions, whatever their origin. I

believe that this tradition always involves a naturalist philosophy. Superstition is

everything that keeps us cut off from our power of action and continually diminishes

it. The source of superstition is the concatenation of sad passions, fear, the hope

linked to fear, the anxiety that delivers us over to our phantoms. Spinoza knows, likeLucretius, that there are no joyful myths or superstitions. Like Lucretius, he sets the

image of a positive Nature against the uncertainty of gods: what is opposed to Nature

is not Culture, nor the state of reason, nor even the civil state, but only the

superstitions that threaten all human endeavor. . ." (Deleuze 1992:270).

9Thus calling into question Habermas's claims of a social life bifurcated into

public/private, purposive/communicative, lifeworld/system.

10It should be remembered that Marx quotesPrometheus Boundin the forward to his

dissertation: "be sure of this, I would not change my state of evil fortune for yourservitude. Better to be the servant of this rock, than to be faithful boy to Father Zeus"

(Aeschylus 1942:140). This view is diametrically opposed to the words of Homer,

which Plato uses to justify his authoritarianism: "Better to be the poor servant of a

poor master, than to live like them the masses of people" (Plato 1924:216).
http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref5http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref5http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref6http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref6http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref7http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref7http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref8http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref8http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref9http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref9http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref10http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref10http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref10http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref9http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref8http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref7http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref6http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html#ref5


20/22

References and Bibliography

Aeschylus. 1956.Prometheus Boundin The Complete Greek Tragedies: Aeschylus II.

Trans. David Greene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Althusser, Louis. 1979.For Marx. New York: Verso Editions.

Aronowitz, Stanley. 1988. Science as Power: Discourse and Ideology in Modern

Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Buchner, Georg. 1977. "Lenz." In The Complete Works. New York: Avon Books.

Cicero. 1972. On The Nature of the Gods. New York: Penguin Classics.

De Santillana, Giorgio. 1961. The Origins of Scientific Thought from Anaxinmander

to Proclus, 600 BC to 300 AD. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October.

____________. 1992.Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. New York: Zone

Books.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1983.Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1887. "The Poet." In Essays: Second Series. Cambridge:

Riverside Press.

Engels, Frederick. 1941.Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of German Classical

Philosophy. New York: International Publishers.

Epicurus. 1964.Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings. Indianapolis: The

Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on

Language. New York: Pantheon Books.

_____________. 1980. The History of Sexuality, Volume I: Introduction. New

York:Vintage.


21/22

Freud, Sigmund. 1961. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton.

Gulli, Bruno. 1996. "Time, Dead Labor, and Capital." City University of New York,

Unpublished Manuscript.

Hegel, Georg F. 1967.Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Trans. T.M. Knox. New York:Oxford University Press.

Horkheimer, Max. 1972. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Continuum.

Krysl, Simon. 1997. "Time and Capital." Duke University, Unpublished Manuscript.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Critique of Everyday Life. New York: Verso.

Lucretius. 1966.De Rerum Natura with an English.Trans. W.H.D. Rouse.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Luxemburg, Rosa. 1964. The Accumulation of Capital. New York: Monthly Review

Press.

Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse. Trans. Martin Nicolaus. New York: Penguin Press.

________. 1974. "Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebkneicht, Bracke, et al." In The

FirstInternational and After: Political Writings, Volume III. New York: Random

House.

________. 1975. "On the Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean

Philosophy of Nature." In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1.

Moscow: International Publishers.

________. 1975b. "Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy." In Karl Marx and Frederick

Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1. Moscow: International Publishers.

________. 1976. Capital. Trans. Ben Fowkes. 3 vols. New York: Penguin Press.

________. 1978. "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844." In The Marx-

Engels Reader, 2nd ed. Robert C. Tucker, ed. New York: W.W. Norton.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. 1980. The Holy Family or The Critique of Critical

Criticism. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Negri, Antonio. 1991.Marx Beyond Marx. New York: Autonomedia.


22/22

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an

Appendix of Songs. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Press.

Plato. 1924. "The Republic," in The Dialogues of Plato in 5 volumes. Trans. Benjamin

Jowett. New York, Oxford University Press.

Rubin, I.I. 1993.Essays on Marx's Theory of Value. Montreal: Black Rose Press.

Sarton, George. 1952.A History of Science, Volume One: Ancient Science Through

The Golden Age of Greece. New York: Wiley & Sons Science Editions.

Thoreau, Henry David. 1962. "Life Without Principle." In Thoreau: Walden and

Other Writings. New York: Bantam Books.

West, Cornell. 1991.Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought. New York: Monthly

Review Press.

Contents copyright 1999 by B. Ricardo Brown.

Format copyright 1999 by Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087, Volume 2, Number 2,

Spring 1999.

http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html
http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.htmlhttp://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.htmlhttp://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html

Marx and the Foundations of the Critical Theory of Morality and Ethics

Documents

Transcript of Marx and the Foundations of the Critical Theory of Morality and Ethics